The Occupy Movement and Global Slum Solidarity
NOTE: I found the following post when I was emptying out old documents from my google drive. Based on the context in the post, it was written on Nov. 14, 2011, when 700-1000 police evicted Occupy Oakland. At the time, I was living just a few blocks away, and although I didn't stay at Occupy Oakland, I participated in a number of their protests (including the Nov. 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike that shut down the Port of Oakland). Without further ado, here's what I wrote the morning after Occupy Oakland was evicted.
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“I have been there for over a month. That is my home.” - Arrested, evicted Occupy Oaklander on KTVU News this morning.
It was just another night in the war zone. The helicopters woke me up at 4:00AM, so I knew that the police were probably about to raid the nearby slum. Except the nearby slum was Occupy Oakland, an ongoing citizen demonstration three blocks from my apartment.
The Occupy movement is not a one-time demonstration or a series of marches. It’s an ongoing “occupation” to deal with an ongoing crisis. To support an ongoing protest, Occupy camps across the country have had to create support and services for their new communities from the ground up. You can call it instant society.
When I first took a walk down to Occupy Oakland on Oct. 20th (only 10 days after it had formed), I found a fully-functional new urban settlement. When I entered the newly-renamed Oscar Grant Plaza, the ground was covered with clean straw and the first thing I saw was an information tent and a man pedaling a stationary bicycle (it makes energy). This central area included a variety of services and community hubs - kitchen, schedules, first-aid, garden, supply stores, etc. Paths made of plywood and pallets left the center like the spokes of a bicycle and even had charming names like “end -ism road.” If you followed a path, you found yourself in a residential area of tents and tarp homes. Neighborhoods, such as a womens’ only area, had already formed. On the outskirts was the amphitheater for holding general assembly (a handy feature of the existing Frank Ogawa Plaza landscape) and additional services (bathrooms, child care, etc.). I’m not very good at estimating numbers, but it looked to me like approximately 150 tents were set up. Music was playing from speakers in the amphitheater with people dancing in the stage area. The seats were filled with occupiers watching and clapping at the end of every song.
5 days later, in a midnight raid, the whole thing was torn down by the police and the occupiers were evicted. That same night, police in riot gear evicted residents of the Kyangombe slum in Nairobi, Kenya ahead of slum demolition. Residents had gotten eviction notices ahead of time, but didn’t believe that they would be carried out. Residents were unable to salvage their homes or belongings and were given no alternate housing options.
Coverage of the Occupy movement initially focused on the movement’s concerns with economic issues - income inequality, unemployment, money in politics, and corporate power. As the novelty has worn off (for the media at least), newer narratives focus on “populist uprising,” “police crackdown,” and of course “filth.” Narratives of disease, filth, and blight are fixtures in popular treatments of Occupy protests. Filth, disease, and blight become “good reasons” for police action. The inherent violence of police forcibly removing people in the middle of the night allows media to settle into the well-worn grooves of the “violent, rioting protester” narrative, which creates further justification for ever more militarized and violent police responses and camp removal.
While protest history is filled with similar story arcs, to me what is starting to appear in coverage of the Occupy movement is the language and logic of slum demolition. The most important element of the logic of slum demolition is the idea that the people in the slum and the informal society that they have created are an affront to the larger, formal society. It’s both obvious and not obvious, but the goal of slum eviction and demolition is not to improve lives for residents but to cleanse a location that popular narratives describe as spawning filth, disease, and violence (with the ever-present risk of these “sicknesses” spreading to the rest of “official” society).
From a 2002 UN Habitat report:
“The main arguments for the clearance of slums have been linked to their potential as breeding grounds of political dissent, disease, crime and prostitution. Many slum removal initiatives have in fact had the removal of a perceived eyesore as their primary objective. Unfortunately for such initiatives (but not surprisingly), poor people tend to remain poor even when their houses have been demolished.
And I didn’t have much trouble finding similar language regarding Occupy protests:
“On Thursday, Oct. 27, the [San Francisco] Chronicle ran an editorial titled, “Occupy Oakland exits the high ground.” While acknowledging that “[t]he sweeps were rough and far from perfect,” it defended Oakland’s decision to remove the tent city, saying it had become a “health hazard and a public nuisance.” “Health inspectors are equally concerned about San Francisco’s campground at the foot of Market Street.” The editorial warned that public support for the movement would likely wane if it didn’t comport itself in a more respectable way. “It’s doubtful the country wants permanent tent villages on its public doorstep,” the editorial concluded. “It’s more than just manners and hygiene that are discrediting this movement. The protesters’ messages, mixed and muddled from the start, are getting eclipsed by the unruliness that is afflicting people and businesses on Main Street.” (Salon)
The language is similar, but is the similar narrative framing and attendant policy response warranted? With their dense living conditions, lack of advanced infrastructure, improvised societies, and scorn from “formal” society’s power structure, the forms look similar - at least on the outside. Yet Occupy protesters are part of a political movement and live in Occupy camps voluntarily - millions of slum residents have no choice but to live in any housing available.
And yet isn’t it possible to make connections between the goals of the Occupy movement and the goals of squatters’ rights advocates and slum activists? Economic injustice, lack of jobs, concentrated wealth and power, militarized police and police brutality, disenfranchisement of the impoverished and unemployed, lack of access to quality housing (and exploitation in housing), and public disinvestment are relevant issues for both movements.
Is there a way to see the form of the Occupy camp as living and attempting to make an improvised society in the face of a power structure that is indifferent (or in many instances actively hostile) to the needs of its citizens - in other words, what slum dwellers have been doing for decades? Sanitation, health problems, and all of the attendant ills are not caused by individual delinquency but are always the challenges of concentrated living. In the criticisms of “slum-like” conditions at Occupy camps, my internal response is always the same: “When the power structure fails to provide housing, jobs, and adequate sanitation and public health - what else can we expect? This is why we have public society. When concentrated economic power loots and breaks public society, this is what it creates: slums. We are working together to create the democratic society that no longer exists at the national level and these are the challenges that we are trying our best to overcome - we’re sorry if we haven’t yet done so in the month or so that we have existed.”
I didn’t have much trouble finding English-language news of slum raids and evictions in Rio, Kenya (1, 2, 3), and India (1, 2, 3) - all in the last few weeks. And of course, Occupy evictions continue across the US.
With last night’s second eviction of Occupy Oakland, we can see within the space of a few paragraphs the attempt to change the meaning of Occupy from its stated purpose (as a political movement fighting economic injustice and inequality) to the standard definition of a slum.
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s statement on last night’s second Occupy eviction:
“We're here this morning because Occupy Oakland has taken on a different direction from the national movement. It was no longer about the abuses of the financial institutions, foreclosures and to the unemployed.
At the encampment we've had repeated violence, we've had a murder. I don't want any more people to die before this comes to an end.
The encampment has been a tremendous drain on our city. During one of the recent demonstrations, we had 179 public safety calls for service that went unanswered because of the demonstrations downtown.
We've had increased drug dealing, sexual assaults, all of this was occurring in a one-square block encampment. This is not what Occupy Wall Street is about.
In addition to the violence at Frank Ogawa Plaza, the city cannot afford for our small businesses and vibrant downtown to lose hundreds of jobs and nearly half of their patrons.”
Once Occupiers are separated from their stated political goals, denied the label of “legitimate protest,” and relabeled as a slum, what kinds of connections can we make between their movement and the movement for global slum dweller dignity? What can Occupiers learn from the struggles of slum dwellers to create functioning communities? And most importantly, how can we work together, recognizing our differences but in solidarity, to provide dignity and opportunity for all slum dwellers, futureless youth, marginalized homeless, and even downwardly mobile westerners?
